Designing an IT System for a Fitness Centre

Purpose The purpose of this is to prepare a Project Plan the objective of which is to develop a comprehensive plan for an end-user information system and to illustrate its alignment to an organization ‘s business objectives . This Project Plan for systems development is in accordance with the specifications of a company called – The Fitness Centre

Objective This comes out with a comprehensive Systems Development Plan for The Fitness Centre

Scope This specifies the individual roles of the various functional units of [banner_entry_middle]

The Fitness Centre as well as the types of information expected to be obtained from them

A relational database management system (RDMS ) model is used as the basis in building the planned information system . Furthermore , the said RDBMS is used to define the various tables that will make up the various databases

The Project Plan for The Fitness Centre

Introduction

Overview The Fitness Centre is a service-oriented company operating in a metropolitan area . It has about 650 client-members and 30 employees in each of the three locations scattered within the metropolitan area

Strategic Plan In a strategic planning session led by the Marketing department of The Fitness Centre , the senior officers agreed to transform the manual management information system (MIS ) of the company into a full-electronic MIS . This comprehensive transformation of the MIS is to prepare the organization to compete with its competitors in the area in terms of fast and accurate exchange of vital information about market data , clients , employees , purchasing and logistics support inventory , and financials , for example

The strategic planning team assigned and empowered the MIS Section of the Administration department to lead the undertaking from all its various aspects , that is , from planning to implementation , maintenance and necessary system improvement . The initiative is composed of four phases (a ) System Planning (b ) System Analysis and Design (c ) System Implementation (d ) System Maintenance and Improvement . In this Project Plan , only phases (a ) and (b ) are covered

Goals and Objectives The primary purpose of this information system development , as envisioned by the Director of marketing , is to assist The Fitness Center in obtaining a competitive advantage over other fitness clubs in the area . One of the performance objectives of the system is to help member-clients plan a fitness program to meet their particular needs

Scope of the New System This system will be used by both member-clients and fitness consultants to track the participation of service facility users in various fitness activities , such as (a ) free weights (b volleyball (c ) swimming (d ) stair climbers (e ) yoga , and (f ) aerobic classes

The Plan

The organization structure of The Fitness Centre

Figure 1 shows the organization structure of The Fitness Centre . It is composed of four functional departments (a ) Marketing (b Administration (c ) Finance and (d ) Operations . The Fitness Centre is headed by a Managing Director each of the functional department is headed by a department Director .Under each department are Sections or sub-functional units with specifically defined set of responsibilities . Each of these sub-functional units generate information specific to its own operating activities . The partial undefined unique information generated by these sub-functional units are listed in Table in 1 . These specific information arising from each Section is the foundation of the MIS being used by The Fitness Center for decision-making purposes of its officers managers , supervisors , and staff . At present the MIS of The Fitness Centre is manual system however , based on the decision reached in a recent strategic planning meeting , this manual MIS is going to be transformed in a full electronic MIS . The information contained in Table 1 serve as an outline for system investigation from which system analysis and design begin . Furthermore , Table 1 reflects the characteristics of a process ‘ – that is , an entity that is driven by an input ‘ and ultimately produces an output ‘ or it is simply illustrated in what is generally known as the input-process-output expression (see Tremblay , 1989 Awad , 1988 . Each one of the various sub-functional units of The Fitness Centre is a process in fact , the entire The Fitness Centre is viewed as a huge process box that is driven by certain inputs – for example , an inquiry on the various services of the company drives the Sales sub-functional unit into action like providing an answer to a question – and produces and output , like , a specific service

Table 1 . Input-Process-Output ‘ Matrix for System Investigation br

Source of Inputs

Inputs Sub-functional Unit

(Process

Output

Receiver of Output

Prospective clients Inquiry about services Business Development Answers to inquiries , company pro Prospective Clients Clients

All departments Request for IT /IS service MIS (Management Information System ) Various IT /IS-related information Concerned department Steps for systems analysis

Merriam-Webster defines system in various way as : regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole [e .g ,] . a number system . a group of interacting bodies under the influence of related forces [e .g ,] . a gravitational system . an assemblage of substances that is in or tends to equilibrium [e .g ,] a thermodynamic system . a group of devices or artificial objects or an organization forming a network especially for distributing something or serving a common purpose [e .g ,] . a telephone system . a heating system . a highway system . a computer system (2004 . In the management viewpoint , Koontz , O ‘Donnell and Weihrich (1980 ) define system as : A set or assemblage of things connected , or interdependent and interacting o as to form a complex unity a whole composed of parts in ly arrangement according to some scheme or plan (p . G-15 The system view of Deming is that entity that is composed of various components that are interacting with each other toward a common goal and that a system has a boundary that separates it from other systems (see Latzko and Saunders , 1995 . Hawryszkiewycz (1991 , on the other hand , provides a theoretical view of systems ‘ focused toward computer system with several parts or components , namely : subsystem feedback ‘ monitoring ‘ boundary ‘ and environment (p . 3 Furthermore , Hawryszkiewycz ‘s (1991 ) provides the components of a computer-based information system ‘ as , namely (a ) data source (b computer processing unit (c ) report (d ) human beings , and (e ) Form . The primary focus of this Project Plan is that of Hawryszkiewycz ‘s (1991 system viewpoint and its secondary focus is that of Koontz , O ‘Donnell and Weihrich ‘s (1980 ) management system viewpoint

Computers or computer system , according to Hawryszkiewycz (1991 ) are used in problem solving in various settings but business organizations use the computers and computer systems the most . Computer information system analysis , therefore , entails the scrutiny of all the various components of the system and comes up with an understanding of the unified and coordinated (although it does not usually happen , that is why problems arise ) interaction of these various components toward a goal or objective

The theoretical view of system ‘ and the computer-based information system ‘ models of Hawryszkiewycz ‘s (1991 ) are used in analyzing the current system and in designing the MIS of The Fitness Center . Following are the simple and practical steps to be considered in analyzing both management and computer information systems

Ask for the official organization chart . This is very important and a computer system analyst should not proceed with his work without securing this document . The organization chart is an official document of a company that defines the roles and responsibilities of identified people in the organization and who reports to and who supervises whom The organization chart and structure of The Fitness Centre is shown in Figure 1 above

Focus on the first two levels of management of the organization . The focus of study of The Fitness Centre ‘s system is on the four departments of the company and the sixteen sub-functional units or Sections

Identify the goals and objectives of an organization that will use the system . The goals and objectives of The Fitness Centre have been defined above

Identify and classify the people who will be involved in the design and development of the system . The Project Plan for The Fitness Centre involves these people : the senior officers (the managing Director and the Directors of the four departments the managers and supervisors of each sub-functional unit the individual employees of the company and the individual clients

Identify the end-users ‘ The end-users for the system to be developed for The Fitness Centre are the employees of the company (approximately 95 ) who are given access to the system including all the clients . Each sub-functional has several personnel identified end-users but not all employees

Gather the individual needs of the identified end-users ‘ Table 1 above shows the undefined needs of the various users of the system . The matrix , however , serves an important role in the system analysis because it identifies the unique needs of the various sub-functional units

Gather all business Forms and Reports that are routinely generated or prepared . This is the lowest level of the analysis aspect of the task At this point , the Forms and Reports serve as the foundation of data and any information that will be generated by the system . The various business forms used by and the various reports generated by the sub-functional units of The Fitness Centre have been collected . These have also been analyzed by the assigned system analysts for the project

Once the steps above are done , system design may commence (see Hawryszkiewycz ‘s 1991

Steps for systems design

System design involves these key areas (a ) identification of related data and establishing them as tables in what is known as relational data ‘ tables (b ) link these data tables to enable the broadening of the coverage of the system – that is , it should cover the entire organization and should be able to distribute information across the organization (c ) enable querying ‘ – in a layman ‘s term this is asking a question to the computer using a computer-defined language and (d ) enable the generation of reports derived from the various databases (see Hawryszkiewycz , 1991 Tremblay , 1989 Awad , 1988

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS ) The structure of the databases of The Fitness Centre is based on the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS ) data structure theory (see Ozkarahan , 1990 Awad , 1988 Tremblay , 1989 . Some of the relational tables ‘ are shown below . Related tables from which specific data would be extracted are joined ‘ together a query ‘ command that is invoked would extract required data a report generator ‘ program automatically produces a formatted report . Data , for example , employee name and employee ID No come from the various business Forms that are either directly to certain business processes or procedures or , if not , Forms that are classified as stand-alone ‘ The design of the RDBMS also recognizes and applies the three types of data relationships ‘ namely one-to-one (1 :1 ‘ – an association between two entities . [e .g ,] an employee has one social security number one-to-many (1 :M ‘ – describes an entity that may have two or more entities related to it . [e .g ,] a supervisor many have many ‘ subordinates and many-to-many (M :N . relates to entities that have many relationships in both directions (Awad , 1988 , pp . 175-176

Client Name Age Table

Sex Table

Location Table

Activity Table

Equipment Table

F-name L-name Age

Sex Code

Area Code

Activity Code

Eqpt Eqpt Desc LocMale M

Area 1 A-1

Free Weights FW Female F

Area 2 A-2

Volley Ball VB Area 3 A-3

Swimming SWEmployee Table

Stair Climbing SCF-name L-name ID

Yoga YO Aerobics AE

The linkages of the various relational tables of The Fitness Centre are reflected in the various Reports ‘ generated from the system . The Reports ‘ are the outputs ‘ of the system . Table 2 below shows some of the reports to be generated by the new system

Table 2 . Partial List of Reports Generated by the New Information System for The Fitness Centre

Part of the information system transformation project designed and developed for The Fitness Centre is systems performance review and maintenance . This activity entails the setting of scheduled activities pertaining to these two aspects of the project . Table 3 shows this schedule

Table 3 . Systems Review and Maintenance Schedule Department

p System

(Program ) Date Performance Review and Evaluation System maintenance service

Office of the Managing Director

Consolidated Report February 2007 February 2007 Executive Monitoring System February 2007 February 2007

Marketing Department

List of Clients February 2007 February 2007 Price list February 2007 February 2007

Administration

Personnel Information March 2007 March 2007 Recruitment March 2007 March 2007 Compensation and Benefits March 2007 March 2007 Training and Development April 2007 April 2007 Turnover April 2007 April 2007

Finance

Financial Statement April 2007 April 2007 Equipment and Machine inventory April 2007 April 2007 Payroll May 2007 May 2007 Monthly Receivables May 2007 May 2007 Monthly Payables May 2007 May 2007

Operations

Area 1 – Client database June 2007 June 2007 Area 2 – Client database June 2007 June 2007 Area 3 – Client database June 2007 June 2007 An Executive Memorandum will be issued by the Office of the Managing Director for the information of all employees about the deployment of the new computer information system and the subsequent scheduled system performance review and evaluation and corresponding maintenance services to be conducted by the MIS (Management Information System sub-functional unit

High-level sequence of activities

Figure 2 shows a high-level interaction or sequence of activities of various functional /sub-functional units of The Fitness Centre . These graphical illustrations of interactions serve as guides to various concerned users of the new system including the various clients of the company . The establish management system procedures will provide the details of how activities are done by identified personnel .Conclusion

This Project Plan is concluded by an Executive Memorandum to all employees oSf The Fitness Centre shown below

The undersigned is d to inform everyone in The Fitness Centre that a new plan to transform our manual management information system (MIS into a full-electronic computerized MIS has been finalized and will take effect on February 1 , 2007

The primary goal of this undertaking is to compete strategically with our known and prospective competitors in the area of fast , accurate , and reliable exchange of information – from basic to complex

One of the performance objectives of the system is to help member-clients plan a fitness program to meet their particular needs This new information system will also enable our clients to quickly get information about the progress of the courses they enrolled with us

User training schedule has been set up by our MIS Section prepare your respective departments and sections for said forthcoming training

After the deployment of our new system , system performance review and evaluation as well as associated maintenance will be conducted by our MIS Section ( see also the schedule

I would like to thank everyone especially those who participated in this very important and critical undertaking for their support and cooperation in coming with this Project Plan

I look forward to your continued cooperation as well as a rewarding endeavor in the coming months and years